Hervey remounts his horse

Those who prefer their history straight may look askance at the historical novel, particularly if it is military. Accuracy is all. Surely it was the 31st Foot rather than the 38th and was the rifle yet in service and when did the Iron Duke say that it had been a really, really close-run thing?

But Alan Mallinson’s reputation rests on authenticity, for he is a serving soldier who has commanded a cavalry regiment. It is cavalry of the four-legged, rather than the tracked, sort that he has made his own in fiction and soon one has settled into regimental life, albeit in the early 19th century and, in this case, on the muddy river banks of Burma and the dusty plains of Hindoostan. There may be occasional longueurs – these are authentic, too – and social duties such as attending the sergeant-major’s wedding but we have joined for action and to see the world and that is what we get.

The world we see is through the eyes of Matthew Hervey, now the hero of five novels by Brigadier Mallinson. But what is it like to meet him for the first time in the fifth? He is obviously a fine fellow: brave, resourceful and, inevitably, a survivor. We learn that he is a widower with a child in England and that he had fought at Waterloo but nothing about his appearance, voice and manner because, presumably, all that was in the earlier books. So he comes across as something of a lay figure and the reader’s imagination must get to work.

It is the detail that fascinates: how to use a sabre, shoot a wounded horse, mine a bastion, keep an Indian mistress and teach a Marwari stallion to rear so that one can lance the mahout on the back of a war- elephant.